


I Hope To Have You With Me

by ExistentialFish



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Everyone but fundy dream tommy and sort of eret are mostly mentioned, I'm awful at tagging and summaries but I'm tired so here you go, No shipping, Permadeath is important for the context, Technically inspired by Cigarette Ahegao by Penelope Scott, Tommy centric, Tommy's older in this (19-21) but still no shipping., Very little dialogue, happy end :), i guess, this is technically the last work in a series but I hope it's good on its own?, time loop vaguely mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:26:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27552271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExistentialFish/pseuds/ExistentialFish
Summary: Ever since he woke up feeling out of place five years ago, Tommy has been haunted by memories of a man called Dream. When he turns nineteen, Tommy takes matters into his own hands and sets off to find some answers.---Please note! This story is technically meant to be the finale of a 7-part series that I don't think I will write any time soon. However, I think this can still hopefully be enjoyed on it's own. It will probably help to read the author's note before reading if you want to understand the context of the fic.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 159





	I Hope To Have You With Me

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't really what I planned to write after You Need to Let Go, and I am still working on the projects I mentioned there, but this was nagging at my brain so it was written first.
> 
> Context!!- In this au, Tommy and Wilbur both ended up going crazy (Tommy less so) and Tommy blew up Pogtopia with just him and Wilbur inside in the hopes that killing them both and destroying Pogtopia would save everyone else from what Wilbur had been planning and allow their lives to go back to normal. Dream can't help but feeling responsible, especially after hearing a comment Niki makes, and he abuses his admin powers to turn back time to try to prevent this from happening. However, each time he does this, something else goes horribly wrong and he has to try again. Eventually he gives up and, blaming himself for the events that happened on his server, he kicks everyone out and deletes the server, despite knowing this will lock him inside the server on his own forever.  
> Everyone else on the Server was taken back in time to before they joined the server and forgot it ever happened but some of them do still suffer lasting effects to their mental state (Wilbur and Tommy most notably). It's implied that several of the others experienced the same dreams Tommy did, but that he was the only one who continued to cling to them over the years.  
> Although only implied, Technoblade was aware of every timeline's events and Dream's sacrifice due to a glitch, and is extra protective of Tommy and Wilbur because of it and created connections with some of the people he remembered meeting on the server before it closed.
> 
> Timeline-  
> At the time of the deletion, Tommy was nearly 17. The deletion took him back to before he joined the Dream SMP, so a couple months out from fifteen (this is obviously just in the universe of this fic and not Tommy’s actual age when he joined the smp). He leaves home when he turns 19, and by the end of the story he's 21.
> 
> Tommy may be extremely ooc because he's in a much different mental state (and because I suck at writing, especially writing Tommy lol).  
> I may write the other six parts (all of which are somewhat inspired by a song from Penelope Scott's album Public Void) at a later date but I'm not sure when that will be. I just happened to write this one first before I lost motivation for the project and didn't want to waste 5,000 words if it could be helped.  
> Also big ol warning that for some reason I usually write in past tense by default. Because of that and because I only had the energy to read through this once, there may be quite a few grammatical errors and typos, sorry.  
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy reading maybe?

Tommy has been dreaming for years. Ever since he’d woken up one day and the world had felt as if it had shifted three inches to the left, he’d been haunted by memories of a man with a white face and explosions beneath his feet. He couldn’t for the life of him remember where he’d ever seen such images. It was the strangest sensation, really. He had just woken up one day and everything was inexplicably different. Techno carried himself like he’d aged ten years and had the weight of a world on his shoulders, Wilbur became quieter and more distant, eventually spending less and less time at home, Phil looked at his three boys with a pity Tommy didn't know the source of, and Tommy, well, Tommy felt dead.

His limbs felt too small, and some days he’d feel phantom pains of injuries and go to touch them, only to find not even a scar in their place. Everything seemed muted – his family, his friends, the world around him. Tommy’s torn between what feels like a shell of himself on the outside, too heavy and sluggish to move, and a mind and soul that screamed at him to move, that yearned to run and escape from the prison that had once meant home and safety. And his dreams, Tommy hated his dreams, yet they were the few times he felt somewhat whole and alive. They’d started out painful but much too fuzzy to see, and he dimly remembered more people being there, but over the course of a few months it had dwindled down to just him and The Man, and snippets of what felt like memories.

In his dreams Tommy would see the man dressed in green with a porcelain face – after awhile, when the sights became less blurry around the edges, Tommy came to realize that the white was a mask and not The Man’s face. Sometimes, Tommy would float along and watch a scene play out beneath him, his gaze fixed on a boy who looked just like him, if not a little older (When Tommy turns fifteen, then sixteen, then seventeen, he realizes the boy is him and he should be scared, but all it does is make him chase after wisps of memories more desperately). Other times he was in the scene but held no power over it, watching first person as a city caved in beneath his feet and a man pointed a sword at his throat and Tubbo – Tubbo was there too, strangely. Tubbo didn't seem to remember any of it though and gave him an odd look when Tommy asked him about it. Tommy didn't talk much to Tubbo anymore – jumped off a tower and the two of them shriek with laughter when Tommy manages to catch him. And sometimes, though rare, Tommy would find himself in that same setting, but no memories played out before him. Instead he and The Man would sit together in silence, or walk through the woods. Tommy thinks that sometimes they talk to each other, but could never remember any words that may have been spoken.

Tommy used to be scared of The Man, when he was still fourteen and then, a little into fifteen. He watched memories of The Man swinging blades at him, or standing at blackstone gates and lighting TNT that blew Tommy’s world to shreds, or chasing him down as Tommy clutched three discs in his hand. Over time though, the fear disappeared and a deep curiosity took it’s place. He saw more fragile memories – The Man sitting back and listening to music with him, handing him netherite armor and telling him he had faith in him, welcoming Tommy at the gates into unfamiliar territory. Tommy didn't feel so afraid of him then, he almost likes those memories. And though they don't speak that Tommy can remember when he’s lucid, he’s still aware of The Man’s body language, the slump of his shoulders, the quiet defeat in his step. Tommy thinks that maybe he’s lonely, and he cant bring himself to fear a lonely man.

Tommy spends as much time as he can sleeping, watching the foreign green words flash over his vision in between memories (he writes them down when he wakes up. He isn't sure what they are, but he’s sure they mean something.) and clinging to a past that doesn't exist for him. Sometimes he wishes he could stay asleep forever – its the only time he feels alive, when he wakes he feels like a ghost wearing the bones of a boy his brothers wish would come back. The sleeping doesn't help with his waking behavior, unfortunately. All the time resting fills him with energy and a deep, aching need to go do something. But Techno has had a haunted look in his eyes ever since the day Tommy woke up and everything had changed, and Phil had long since noticed his new reckless behavior, so neither of them let him leave. Instead they give him busy work to do around the farm or sadly try to prompt him to come back out of his shell. Tommy hates it. Something is wrong in the world, and Tommy feels like he hasn't been alive in a long time.

He tries to run away a few times. The first two, when he was freshly fifteen, he didn't even make it off the property. The third, a few months later, Techno dragged him back home within a day. The fourth had lasted longer, nearly a week, but Phil had found him and brought him home with a touch too gentle and a miserable look in his eyes that made Tommy want to look away. The fifth and final attempt, when Tommy was sixteen, he didn't even make it out of the house. Wilbur had been staying with them that month, and he came out of the kitchen to stare as Tommy opened the front door, bag in hand. Tommy didn't think Wilbur would stop him, he wasn't even fully sure Wilbur was aware he was running away – Wilbur got like that, sometimes, empty headed and dead-eyed as he stared off into a different world – but Tommy couldn't bring himself to leave when his older brother was watching him with glassy, distant eyes so he’d sighed and set his bag down, taking Wilbur’s arm and leading him into the kitchen to make them both some coco as Wilbur smiled and murmured soft, nonsensical stories. After that Tommy resigned himself to living in his dreams, hating his waking moments, and trying to ignore the urgency in his gut whenever he woke from watching The Man gaze at a multicolored sunset.

Tommy sits back and ignores the listlessness and regret as he grows, sleeping his life away. He tries to fake smiles when Phil looks extra concerned, and he tries to act interested in moving about when Techno comments he’s been sleeping too much, and he tries to be content to watch Wilbur come and go as he pleases because the others say it’s what Wilbur needs, and he tries to convince himself he hasn’t been suffocating for the past four years. And it almost works, or at least, it works well enough to make him settle into life on the farm. But then, not long after his nineteenth birthday, after his brothers and some of Techno's friends who have always felt weirdly familiar to Tommy spent the day together with him, Tommy goes to bed feeling as if something were out of place.

That night Tommy has one of the most vivid dreams he’s had so far. Taunting shouts chase him through thick woods. He’s wearing a blue uniform, the same he wears when he dreams of a towering flag and old faceless friends and explosions rumbling under his feet. His blood is pounding with determination and a little bit of fear as he clutches something in his hands. He hears the voices begin to grow nearer and he scales the nearest tree as fast as he can, grinning because Phil taught him to do this long ago and those bitches don’t stand a chance of catching him. The voices pass by his hiding spot in the pine but Tommy keeps climbing up, up, up, until he breaks through the canopy and feels the warmth of the setting sun on his face.

Then, he hears a crack as the branch splinters beneath his foot. Before he knows it, Tommy’s falling. Colors whiz by his eyes, and the whole world turns scarlet as hits the ground and his leg snaps louder than the branch had. Tommy screams. It hurts so badly, and he knows he’s not safe here, he has to go, but the moment he tries to move he collapses back down, sobbing. He isn’t sure how long he stays there for, whether it’s seconds or minutes or an eternity, but then through the sounds of his own ragged breathing, Tommy hears footsteps rapidly approaching. The Man approaches, axe in hand, and Tommy shies back. He knows he isn’t supposed to get caught by this man, something about a war he thinks, but he’s in no state to fight him off.

The Man hastily attaches the axe to his hip and kneels next to Tommy, scooping him up into his arms. Tommy bites his lip to stop the pained shout from escaping and The Man pauses briefly to pet his hair soothingly. Then he sets off quickly towards the walls that tower in the distance. The pain in his leg is too much, and Tommy squeezes his eyes shut.

“Please,” he rasps.

“We’re nearly there,” the voice says. Tommy hears it a thousand times, like waves crashing over his ears. “You’ll be okay, I promise.”

Tommy can’t understand why The Man is helping him. He has no obligation to. They’re at war – if anything, The Man has an obligation to take advantage of his weakness or leave him for dead. Yet still he came back for Tommy. His arms and voice are solid and protective and worried, and if Tommy tries he can hear his heartbeat in between his sobs.

It’s at that moment, in that dream, that Tommy realizes The Man is real. And it’s at the moment Tommy decides he’s going to go back for him, too.

Tommy wakes as he’s being passed from one set of arms to another. Tommy wakes, and he gets to work.

\---

Tommy has the right to leave. Techno doesn't agree, he argues and berates him and tells him he’s not ready. Wilbur is quiet, but Tommy can tell that he doesn't want Tommy to go either by the distant desperation in his skin-crawling stare. Phil wishes Tommy would stay – Tommy can he see it in his sad smile and the tense set of his shoulders – but he places his hand on Techno’s shoulder and Tommy’s brother falls silent. Phil, Tommy knows, understands wanderlust. Phil understand the need to move and be free and create and have the space to find yourself. Phil understands what it’s like to be called by something, even if Phil’s calling is that of the wild and not the absence of a stranger (Friend? Enemy? Brother?).

Tommy takes advantage of the silence to add that he’s going on a quest, and that he doesn’t know when he’ll return. Tommy can see in Phil’s eyes that he, like Techno and Wilbur, wants to keep Tommy away from the danger of the world, but he tips his head in acknowledgment and asks when he’s leaving. Tommy smiles at him, a rare, genuine thing. One of the many things he’s always appreciated about Phil is that his love rarely blinds him. Phil’s love, unlike Wilbur’s, does not seek to hold on to the pieces of Tommy he fell in love with, those that are mostly long gone. Phil’s love, unlike Techno’s, does not drive him to protect and shelter Tommy at the cost of keeping him from growing. Phil’s love, instead, urges him to nurture, to help but never control, guide but never direct. Phil sees him and, unlike Tommy’s other brothers, accepts that Tommy is not the same helpless little boy they took under their wings many years ago.

So Phil gives Tommy all the supplies and advice he might need and sends him on his way with a promise that he’ll keep Tommy’s bedroom ready for him when he’s ready to come home, if that day ever comes.

Tommy is nineteen, and he is off on a quest to save a life.

\---

Tommy meets many people along his way, faces who seem familiar with blurry edges. Voices he hears in the background noise of his dreams. Names that come to the house on parchment, to which Techno tells him, vaguely, that he’s trying to stay in touch with.

Meeting Sapnap makes Tommy’s blood boil for the first time in years, the remnants of a grudge he’s never had. It feels like waking up from a long and draining dream, and Tommy wonders if this is what it feels like to be alive, basking in the strong emotions. Still, he tries not to step on the man’s toes too much.

The night Tommy spends in Sapnap’s town, he dreams of Sapnap’s voice off to the side as The Man leads Tommy to a wall of rules. Tommy makes a quip making fun of Sapnap and The Man laughs, something fond in his fuzzy smile.

Tommy asks Sapnap the next morning if he’s ever met a man dressed in green and a white mask, and Sapnap kicks him out.

Visiting Eret is difficult. Tommy had met the man, Techno had brought him home out of the blue one day. Eret had visited their home twice since then, and Techno had brought Tommy along with him to pay a visit to the man once. Because of that past, Tommy doesn't feel too bad showing up at Eret’s doorstep two months into his journey, asking to stay the night. Eret lets him in and Tommy tries not to linger on the way both his head and chest ache when he looks at Eret.

That night his sleep is empty of dreams. Tommy lets Eret pry into his worries the next day, and ends up confessing to Eret his mission and the dreams that have plagued him for years.

Eret smiles at him pityingly and admits he’d dreamt of a world beyond their reach month too. Tommy asks for more but Eret simply shakes his head and says he’d given up on chasing the memories long ago, and the remnants of the dreams had long since faded from his mind. Tommy is disappointed and, after Eret advises him to give up as well and just go home, Tommy ends up spending the next four days locked in Eret’s guestroom planning the next leg of his journey. 

Eret doesn’t try to convince Tommy to stay, but he does assure him that his door is always open if Tommy needs any more help. Later that day, when Tommy sets up camp for the night, he finds a dream journal tucked into his bag alongside an extra set of rations. Only three of the pages are filled and their contents offer no new information about the nature of the dreams, but a name is circled on the third page. It’s been underlined and bolded, then crossed out hastily. Dream, it reads, Dream Taken. It feels right. The following night, in his dreams, Tommy calls The Man by his name.

Tracking down Fundy is so frustrating he nearly throws a fit, but Tommy is nothing if not stubborn. He had dreamed of enchanted swords and a bloody massacre as Dream shakily wrote something in the air in what looked to be Galactic, which Tommy has since come realized looks similar to the messages that sometimes flash between the scenes in his dreams.

It took a bit of asking around, but Tommy eventually finds a villager who’s willing to help him out. The villager tells him there’s only one man in the area who knows the secrets of enchantments and coding and dead languages. Tommy is set on his goal now that he knows of Fundy’s existence, and devotes himself to tracking him down. It takes over a month to find and catch up to him, but once he did the two of them fell into scathing banter. It felt like they’ve been speaking that way to each other for years.

Fundy tries to shoo him away until Tommy throws down all of what’s left of the money Phil had given him sixth months ago. Fundy snatches up the money and Tommy smirks and repeats his demand that Fundy answer his questions. Fundy agrees, somewhat reluctantly, but pales when he sees the shaky galactic Tommy has scribbled in the empty pages of Eret’s journal. Tommy tells him he isn’t sure what they mean but they flash across his vision in between memories, when dreams of laughter and full rooms glitch into an empty field and a lonely man sitting by himself.

The words, apparently, really do have meaning. Tommy is more glad than ever that he decided to seek Fundy out as the hybrid sits and translates the sentences for him. Tommy reads through them once Fundy’s done.

_‘Tommy, I’m lonely.’_ Tommy recognizes that one as one of the newer sentences, which started appearing after he dreamed of stepping onto a long wooden path for the first time, Sapnap’s voice nagging at the back of his mind.

_‘You’re not where you usually are, are you coming to find me?’_ and _‘I didn’t have the grace of the Creator then, but maybe you will. I’m waiting.’_ both appeared soon after Tommy left home.

_‘Please hurry. I know this won’t work. But I hope trying makes you happy.’_ Tommy remembers seeing this one many times in between flashes of war and explosions and bees in a flower field.

_‘I wish they’d remember me.’_ is one the oldest and most persistent messages Tommy can remember seeing, alongside. _‘I wish you’d forget me.’_

The most recent message Tommy is one had received only two nights prior, after dreaming of days when his voice was higher and he chased after Tubbo in fields he couldn't remember visiting, a wistful _‘I wish I saw you grow up.’_ lingering as Tommy eased into wakefulness by the ghost of a hand patting his head.

Fundy tells him he’s read of Tommy’s symptoms and claims Tommy was once part of a now closed server. It makes sense to him, so Tommy nods along as Fundy explains the server is gone, lost to the void, it’s presence wiped from the minds of those who were spared from it’s destruction. Fundy tells him whoever is contacting him is likely the admin who’s trapped within the server. Tommy jumps to his feet and loudly exclaims that he’s going to get him out, but Fundy shakes his head. He reminds Tommy that the only one with the power to release an admin from a server is the Creator.

Fundy sits back and lets Tommy seethe. He rants and rages and, in his despair, The Man’s name slips from his lips. Fundy flinches back, and as the name Dream hangs heavily in the silence between them he gains a thoughtful look. Quietly, he slides a map across the table to Tommy and tells him the Creator is fond of those who win the game. If Tommy can make it to the End and if Tommy can kill, and _if_ Tommy has caught the Creator’s eye and gained their affection then there’s a chance the Creator will grant Tommy’s wish.

But, Fundy warns him, beating the game is not an easy task. And even if Tommy succeeds, he’ll have to step through the void portal. Those who travel through it must hold one solid goal in their mind the whole way through, lest they go insane. And if Tommy were to cheat the game or fail to gain the Creator’s favor, he would likely be tossed into a locked sever himself to rot away in insanity.

Hearing this, Tommy hesitates for the first time since he first set out. He knows beating the game is not impossible, but it’s certainly difficult. He thinks of his brothers who promised to wait for him, of Tubbo to whom he’d never said goodbye, and even of Eret, who seemed like the type to feel guilty at aiding Tommy in a quest that could very well kill him. He aches at the thought of never seeing his brothers again, especially now that he finally feels _alive_ , and despite the distance that had grown between them before he left. He wonders if Tubbo will miss him, and if things could be fixed between them if Tommy goes back.

But then Tommy thinks of Dream, of his memories of wheezing laughter and netherite armor when Tommy needed most. He thinks of a letter in a mail inviting him – _him_ , not Wilbur or Techno, not any of Tommy’s more important and likable friends or family, just plain _Tommy_ – to move to Dream’s server, and the exasperated fondness that greeted him there. He thinks of the memory of being carried back to safety in the midst of a war, and of visions of the man sitting alone in an empty world. Most of all he thinks of the fuzzy memory of bodies strewn across the ground and Dream writing Galactic in the air, twisting time to go back for them, refusing to leave anyone behind. Tommy knows then that he can’t leave Dream behind either, not again.

He pockets the map and thanks Fundy and agrees to stay the night. He dreams of digging a huge hole and spouting out jokes to fuel a kettle-pot laugh, and sets off early in the morning without any falter. He discovers, later, the pouch of money returned to his bag and casts a smile back to Fundy’s house, far in the distance.

\---

Tommy knew from the moment he left Fundy’s home that the trek would be tedious, but twenty is not too young to still cling to naivety, and each month he finds himself expecting his journey to come to a close. It has been many, many months. He thinks he may have turned twenty-one a month ago, judging by the dream he had of a returned disk wrapped neatly at the foot of his bed and someone laughing as Sapnap gave him “birthday punches.”

Tommy feels more alone than he thinks he’s ever been. He misses his friends and family, and he misses a life he only remembers in dreams. He misses being a stupid kid, even if h hasn't felt like a kid since he woke up at fourteen in a strange world. Yet still, despite nearly dying countless times, despite the loneliness and constant wariness, and despite the ache of injuries he has to learn to heal on his own, Tommy feels more whole with every step he takes.

He breathes and no longer doubts that he’s alive. He grows, and no longer worries he’s stuck in place. He improves his skills, and no longer worries about living up to expectations. He feels truly alive, finally. He’s excited for Dream to feel alive again too.

More galactic appears in his dreams, but Tommy cannot read it and Fundy is much too far back to give him answers. He thinks that Dream might realize this, as the messages Fundy had decoded start to appear more frequently than the newer ones.

_‘Tommy, I’m lonely’_ appears after Tommy spends weeks wandering alone in the nether, and Tommy swears it’s said to tease him.

_‘I wish you’d forget me’_ appears practically every time Tommy gets injured in his travels, but Tommy pays it no mind.

_‘I wish I saw you grow up’_ visits Tommy’s dreams after Tommy spends the day striking down blazes and endermen, and Tommy thinks it might be said with pride.

\---

Tommy isn’t sure how to feel when he finally makes it, honestly. It took so much blood and tears just to reach the stronghold, and once he stepped through he had fought tooth and nail just to stay alive at the Dragon’s siege. But now that he’s won and the dragon is slain, he can’t help but wonder at how peaceful and lonesome The End is. There’s no wind to whistle through the air, leaving it eerily quiet, and blackness stretches above and to the sides, devoid of stars or light. 

Tommy steps up to the edge of the portal and peers down into the portal. It looks like someone condensed the night sky into this single spot. It’s beautiful, he thinks, and terrifying. Part of him wants to turn and run away from its chilling depths and the voices that whisper to him from within. But among the faint whispers, he thinks he hears a voice, small and familiar and painfully hopeful.

_‘So you really haven’t forgotten me,’_ it calls. _‘You’ve always been so headstrong.’_

“Dream?”

Tommy’s words echo into vast open air. He stands at the very edge and feels his heart race in his chest. He hasn’t felt truly scared for his life in awhile, but now his every breath he feels like a luxury. He can’t imagine being so close, just to fail. He can’t falter now, or die, or be cast aside by the Creator. Not now that he’s so close. Not when Dream needs him. Not after years of dreaming of and chasing after this moment.

Tommy takes a deep breath and etches that thought into his mind. He knows if he loses sight of his goal now it’ll all be for naught. He sways on the edge for a moment then steps forward and plunges into the abyss.

His blood turns to ice in his veins, ink fills his lungs, and starlight scratches against his sides, and still Tommy does not falter. He falls adrift, and feels his body float away from himself. He can’t breathe, can’t move, but still he keeps Dream in his mind.

**_You’ve done well,_** a voice murmurs from all around him. **_You have beat the game. Look at you. Are You proud? Few have done what you’ve done, the risks are immeasurable._**

**_Few chase dreams of men who struck them down, few hold dear those they declared their enemy._ **

**_You have worked hard, young one. We have been watching. We are proud._ **

**_From the dawn of the universe, you have grown, and we love you dearly. You did not give up, and look where it has brought you._ **

Warmth envelops Tommy and his limbs drift back together. It feels almost as if someone has begun to cradle him in hands as big as skyscrapers, comforting him with affection as fierce as the sun. 

“Please,” he rasps out, though he has no air to plead with. “I seek my friend. He deserves freedom.”

**_We know of who you speak. He deserves nothing, he made a choice and payed it with sacrifice. Hush child, we know all. Let us speak._ **

**_We know all. We know worth, we know life. Life holds no value without a give and take, a result for a price, a creation built on ruin. This is how life is, and we want you to live. We want all to live. But you have explored the world, you have beaten the game. Years and blood and tears and, through it all, we have watched you._ **

**_A life of possibilities was sacrificed to save the lives of you and your kin. But now, a life of possibilities has been spent to save the life of the one who disappeared. You have explored the world in full, you have beaten the game, you have lived, all for the sake of this goal._ **

**_We are so proud. You beat the game, you sacrificed all that you could. We love you, and we are so very proud. He deserves nothing more than what he wanted. But you have done as we wished and lived a full life that you would otherwise never have achieved. For this, we owe you. For this, you deserve to grant him freedom._ **

**_We are so proud, child. But the journey is not over yet. There is still more life to live. Now go, and spend that life knowing he lives too._ **

“Thank you,” Tommy whispers in awe.

**_Thank only yourself. You beat the game, you paid the price. Go, live. It is what we wish of you._ **

Tommy closes his eyes, and when he opens them it is to a landscape from old memories. The ground shifts beneath his feet and he is standing in front of a charred city, crumbling apart. The ground shifts, and now he stands before a stone structure the voice at the back of his mind calls home. The ground shifts, and he stands in front of the forest he was once carried through, now missing its trees and riddled with craters. The ground shifts, and Tommy is standing on a wooden pathway that is stained by his own blood, a broken arrow discarded to the side. The ground shifts, and Tommy stands watching a sunset that is void of sun, a haunting melody playing from a jukebox. On the ground sits a man in green, his back to Tommy. The ground stops moving and Tommy feels the warm hands push him forward, and he knows this is it.

Tommy walks toward the figure, and they lift their head to look at him. Tommy meets the eyes of a lonely man who dares not hope or breathe as he stares up at Tommy. 

Tommy smiles and extends his hand toward Dream. “Hey Big D. Been awhile, hasn’t it? I reckon it’s time we go home. Together, this time.”

Dream takes his hand, and a forgotten world splinters away around them.

**_Live,_** the voice tells them. And for decades, they do.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to let me know if you enjoyed or give me critique. If you're confused or curious about anything, including the context, let me know, I love to ramble about my unnecessary lore and ideas :)
> 
> Hope you all have a good day <3


End file.
